


left you with the ghosts

by erzi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Blood/Injury Mention, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-01 22:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20922122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erzi/pseuds/erzi
Summary: The sun is overhead, searing circles to your vision, and so you close your eyes. Mindfulness. Practice mindfulness. Force your heart back to its cage of bones. Breathe, deep and calm. Remember emotions are fleeting but blood is eternal.You are Matoba Seiji and you will not be made the fool over a boy.





	left you with the ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> also available in [russian](https://ficbook.net/readfic/9584976)! :-)

_Matoba Seiji_. Note the way the mouth shapes itself to speak this amalgamation of contrasts. Lips pursed together come to a light tongue-click, then settle together once more in openness ended abruptly. Sibilance follows, the harshness of air whistled past the front teeth and then just a little back. Your name is Matoba Seiji and you are shackled by it the bloody moment you are born.

* * *

Your earliest memory is of a large, cool hand loosely holding yours, leading you to a forest. The summer grass is pliant under your sandaled feet; the sun is not high enough to blind, but neither low enough to drip into being those white-masked lanky shadows usually flanking you. You are brought in front of a tree and asked what you see at its top.

"A kimono," you answer.

"What color?"

"Red with gold flowers."

Your second earliest memory: subdued celebration, your family's smiles flashing teeth, those shadow creatures oiling about, strangers streaming into the house with a sweaty sheen on their brows glistening more when they glance at you.

You are not much a child so much as a means to an- ah, not an end; your family's game isn't going to end. A means to an existence. You exist because your family exists; you exist to keep your family existing. You are the center and circumference of a circle, as was your father before you, his father before him, and _his_ father... Nauseating. Never-ending. You are one of dozens of circles forging a chain that commands power for its length and strength. But it also restricts. You are not sure which of the two is more formidable.

As soon as you can understand the written and spoken words, your training begins. Your crafting. You are being crafted as a potential heir for when your father retires, and no time must be wasted to ensure it is you, the purest-blooded Matoba, who wins.

Do this. Not that. Show this. Never that. Learn this. Learn that. Your mask begins to take shape when you are young. It is no wonder you will later be unsure if it's become your face itself. Or if you ever had a face to begin with.

Here is an arrow. Hold it. Study it. The smoothness of the wooden shaft, holiest cypress; the arrowhead, made of priest-blessed iron, filed to a point so sharp that it cuts your skin, drawing a pinprick of blood, and you do not notice until you wonder why the feather fletching is smeared in red.

Here is a bow. It's as tall as you; you struggle to hold it. But how beautiful it is: curved, darker than night, taut with a single string that shimmers in the sunlight. You struggle to hold it but you know, as certainly as you know your own name, this thing is yours.

Lined up before you are targets, alternating black and white circles swallowing one another. Eyes upon eyes. Envision the arrow striking the innermost circle, a black like a hole dug out of existence. The arrow will fly from your hand at the bow to strike it. Daily you shall practice until you can do this. And once you have mastered it, you will learn to do this with your right eye closed.

You haven't been told about the Matoba eyes yet. Something has wisped to pensiveness in your mind, born from overhearing what the adults whisper and from your own imagination filling in the blanks. Nothing has been said to you. So you wonder, only wonder.

But you are told other stories. They all feature youkai and people. The youkai do not always lose, but they are always the villains. Untrustworthy, scheming, heartless. They are after people for their earthly and more spiritual belongings. You are taught what they are, but you are also taught what you are. So you do not fear the youkai. You could never lose to one.

The mundane is also taught to you; your family steeps in the things of the past, but it does not deny the present. To ignore it is to invite the doom befallen other families – this was told to you, but you hear it more often in those hushed voices the adults take on unaware you are there. Balance old and new, perfectly so. Go too far in any direction and you will fall. You the individual and you the embodiment of a family's history. You are more than yourself.

You go to school, even, where everything you have learned outside its bland walls would have you derided and disbelieved if spoken. Though you never do speak of the things you know from the shadows, the shadows follow you. They are in the very way you carry yourself.

At school you learn what _x_ between numbers indicates; at home you learn how 乂 drawn at the top of a sealing circle affects its invocation. There is no need to lead a double life, the exorcist-to-be and the student, because in neither of these lives does anyone threaten to cross over to the next. It's fine. Better to be alone at school; it is more time yet to press your nose to yellowed scrolls in flowing script so obsolete you read and reread until your eyes blur. Despite your age and public destination, you are trusted to take them with you and keep their contents secret. You've proven yourself of it. The whispers among those crowds of strangers at home sometimes weave your name into them. 

* * *

When you turn eleven, you are told about the Matoba eyes. A broken promise birthed an endless curse, passed lovelessly down the generations.

"But do not think of it as punishment," you are assuaged. "We are not meant to be youkai's creatures; they serve us, and when they do not, they are unneeded."

That a youkai so hates your name and returns to claim its reward month after month, year after year, leader after leader, lends credence to the clan's power. No weak family could brave an attack for so long. The Matoba clan is strong without the youkai after it, but with it, its power is ironclad. When you become the clan head, the youkai will shift its singular eye to you. But do not fret – the family has predicted its comings, it has devised protections. The ward over your father's eye. Your grandfather's. That, too, will be yours.

So practice your one-eyed archery. It might save you one day.

* * *

You have made a habit of attending exorcist meetings. It helps most are hosted by your own family; you are not refused when you unabashedly snoop on exorcists' conversations. It helps even more being the future Matoba heir. Who is anyone to stop you from catching secrets out of the air?

You have not yet hunted on your own, but your supervised exorcisms have run as smooth as rivers. The talent you'd confirmed that day under the tree blooms by the day. Your head teems with the knowledge read and recited since early childhood; your hands itch with the need to use it on your own. The day will come, but it cannot come soon enough.

The forest you walk through is drunk with night. Youkai point the way to the meeting, and you feel them shake as you silently pass them, your power rippling off you. Then it will be the exorcists themselves quaking when you enter the hall. Your power may not harm them, but they sense its might.

A young man's voice, one strange to you, lilts in between the trees. It argues with another, a voice that scrapes unnaturally. A human and a youkai at odds when the humans should have these things steadfast under their feet. This person is either an inexperienced exorcist, or someone with the sight unintentionally stumbled upon this world.

So you peek through the overgrown shrubs and see a boy your age with anger and resistance sharp in his scowl pointed at an errant youkai.

You're interested in him at first sight. In the defiance of his glare and set mouth. In this amusing act of either idiocy or ignorance. In the roughness to him, not unattractive; there is an art to the lack of style to his hair. It's a good look he dons. A good face. You have to know who he is.

"Stop it," you order the youkai, stepping from your hiding spot. "He's with me."

You do not miss the flit of surprise on the boy's face, wordless yet numerous in it meanings: that someone else was in the forest; that someone else can see these things. The scowl returns, though, aimed at you. What kind of student wanders through a forest at night? What kind of person can see these things and helps a stranger? He questions you, as roughly as you expected. His fear and insecurity he thinks well-disguised, but they stab through his demeanor as exquisitely as mountain peaks.

But you know how to walk through mountain passes. You have spent a lifetime learning the art first-hand and by watching the adults. You know much – maybe too much – and this boy knows nothing. Of course you're terribly intrigued: he is a boy like you, with an ability like you, and everything opposite in its understanding and acceptance. You're even more intrigued when the boy tells you his name.

Natori Shuuichi. Your mind flips through the pages of the exorcist families you've memorized and finds the appropriate section: the Natori clan, the paper-wielders. They who stood stalwart against the Matoba, they who lost their authority when no one with the sight was born to them again. Until now.

_Natori._ You roll around the surname on your tongue, each syllable never far from the front of the roof of your mouth in shifting pressures: soft, hard, hard.

You tell him to call you Seiji, making no mention of your family name. Maybe you do it because no one in this unnatural world calls you that and that alone. Maybe because you would like to be reminded something unique to you follows _Matoba_. Maybe because _Shuuichi_ does not sound dissimilar to _Seiji_; the hiss at their beginnings ends so softly. You call him _Shuuichi-san_ without his leave because it is pleasant to say, and wouldn't it be pleasant to hear _Seiji_ in return?

You have come to the meeting to find something you could use. It's what you tell that distrusting face of his; you tell him with both of your eyes even on his and the corner of your mouth lifting itself with no great effort.

A memory for Shuuichi-san to mirror your own: you point to the top of the tree with the kimono, and you ask him what color it is.

"Deep red," he says.

You hum through that smile of yours that feels exactly right. He has power, this Natori you've found. Not as much as you, but far more than the exorcists nowadays. And though he is but a year older than you, his education in this craft is almost nonexistent. He could be useful.

He could be yours.

A rustle from the bushes reveals Takuma-san, who first admonishes you for meddling in the adults' business and then sees the boy by you. He asks you if he's a friend.

"No," you immediately answer, gesturing to Shuuichi-san like he's a prize you've won, "but he's not bad."

And immediately Shuuichi-san is affronted, harsh glares and loud words he hides in. Just as you use double negatives to keep something truly sincere from slipping out.

You're _so_ very interested.

But you take your leave. Even at this age, you have your duties.

Later, when you're lounging at an open window, breathing in the clear night devoid of people and youkai alike, you see him. He's on the ground floor, in the front garden. He looks up at you a moment after your eyes glide down to him.

There is defiance in that gaze. Good. Very good.

Later still, carefully nonchalant, you inform Nanase-san you've met a boy your age with the sight, raw and great, and also, wouldn't you know, he's a Natori.

The keen glint to her eye is something you will grow used to in your future mentions of this boy.

This world is small. You will meet again.

* * *

It happens in a forest, as most of the spiritual tends to. You're chasing after the trihorn youkai when it suddenly swerves down. Something else has caught its attention. An exorcist, likely. One it is confident about defeating.

Who else is it but Shuuichi-san, clutching a crude paper talisman the youkai will easily rip from him along with his arm, but you throw a paper ward at it – nothing lethal, not when your plan has been drastically changed with Shuuichi-san here – and it flies away.

You mitigate your unintended arrival and aid by asking him if he is also pursuing that youkai, rather than taking it for obvious fact.

His eyes – newly bespectacled, and it is jarring but not unbecoming on that delinquent aura of his – widen seeing you.

You cannot stop yourself from brightening when you ask him, to those incredulous eyes, "Won't you team up with me?"

And then you have no control over your own eyes widening when he not only refuses you, the Matoba heir, but that he does it with an excuse lifted from a storybook: he will push himself to find his strengths and limits, alone.

Your lessons on a leader's presentation, taught or observed, sweep swiftly in, replacing your surprise with a laugh that ignores all emotions. You laugh at the unexpectedness of refusal, at his unfortunate earnestness. You ask him to think your request over.

Shuuichi-san is stubborn, and he blusters away with an adamant reiteration of his refusal.

Though so are you. You revisit the forest daily, studying the youkai. Waiting for a crop of unkempt hair lit gold by the sun.

Of course he too comes back. Your conversation resumes like it hadn't paused with days in between. If this could be called a conversation. Shuuichi-san is horribly easy to mock. You don't mean it maliciously; he's simply so far removed from your world that it's as amusing as it is inconceivable. And that his responses to your prods and pokes are huffed glares and squeaked shouts – how can you not instigate them?

He knows you're being purposeful about it. The obeisance that you are served as the Matoba heir, whether sincere or begrudging, is stale. Shuuichi-san is blunt and overtly emotional and so wonderfully ignorant; he doesn't know what you are except what he sees in front of him: a condescending know-it-all in perpetual smile. You're treated differently, with none of the respect others grant you. Yet there you go after him. You can't seem to stay away.

You hint at what you know and that he is missing, and reap the reward in the form of his pout. His anger turns inside-out, frustration at his own self spreading its tendrils to everything in this world, more so to you who has invited yourself to his side. You understand why his behavior is like that. You would like to hear it from him, though.

You did not team up, officially. But you work together, this loosest of alliances, with half the time spent smiling away at Shuuichi-san's exasperation, and the other half learning how deep his goal goes. He thinks he can achieve it unscathed, but this is a business where one can be chewed and spit out by youkai and fellow exorcists alike.

You advise him to become stronger, but used to commands as you are, he takes it for one, challenging you with a glare.

It's not just that he treats you differently that intrigues you. You want to know what Shuuichi-san will do next. What he could be if he walks your path. He's... unpolished. Yes. He has all the brilliance of an uncut jewel. If he is polished, he'll be resplendent. With your forceful suggestion, you have set him on his way, destination as of yet unknown to the both of you.

This is what you contemplate at a river bank come sunset. The water, stirred by a breeze, skitters diamonds at its surface. Where the sun sinks into it at the horizon it shines blindingly, light reaching further on the water's reflection than the true rays across the sky. If you glanced at your own reflection, to see that which everyone sees, would you be content with it?

Yes, you assure yourself, but you keep your eyes on the horizon, the sun's darkening warmth lesser on the water. There will be plenty of time in the future to judge your own face, but when you are raised to clan head, there will be few occasions for you to forgo your duty like this for something so frivolous. You watch the sunset to memorize it.

This world is very small. Smaller now that you and Shuuichi-san's orbits have coalesced. You will meet again.

* * *

You don't ask for his help in your exorcisms. Neither does he ask you, heavens forbid. Your encounters are unplanned. Mostly. If you ask, someone will tell you what that fledgling Natori is up to. Sometimes you allow yourself this whim, and where Shuuichi-san is soon you are too. To observe, of course. To tease out what he has yet to learn.

_To see him_, whispers a traitor in the back of your mind. _To see this kindred spirit you might have been under different circumstances. To see if he grows. It's to see him._

You are adept at killing spirits. Smothering the one in your own head is easy as breathing. It's what you do, actually: breathe anything out unrelated to your exorcist fate. Out, out, out.

You find out where he lives and visit him. Again that surprise in his eyes, in his lack of awareness of this world's insignificant size, but he settles into resigned acceptance quicker than in your last chance meeting. You are becoming an ambivalent fixture in his life.

There's something on his shoulder that should not be, and you courteously offer its removal. It serves a dual purpose: you could gain a powerful servant, and you see Shuuichi-san while you're at it. You're leaving him in your gratitude, even.

He accepts.

Perhaps for the last time in your life, you are upfront to him about one thing: you do not know how to exorcise this creature. But you will try. You try even when you realize the youkai's become too corrupt to heed an incantation's binding. You chant a stronger spell that will incapacitate this youkai, because it will be of no use to you, and for useless things no kindness must be spared. You begin the words, but it is with Shuuichi-san that you finish, his hand above yours as you both press the paper talisman to the writhing creature's form.

You have no shiki at your side. You don't have a human partner, either. Shuuichi-san had turned you down once but here, right now, you choose to forget that.

You have no choice but to remember otherwise when you feed the youkai in the pot, and his face twists, with something like sickened disappointment, with a wordless _How did I forget how he is?_

Before he collapses, that is.

You say his name, to be sure he's not simply tired, but he doesn't respond. You hesitate. You kneel and cup his cheek – your touch will surely startle him awake.

It doesn't.

"Shuuichi-san," you say again. But it is not an inquiry. It is more a contemplation.

He's cold. The youkai has sapped his power and body heat.

You gently run your hand through his hair (the softest thing you've ever felt), searching for bumps. But he'd staggered unconscious upon grass. Other than a smear of dirt on his cheekbone, which you wipe away with the hem of your sleeve, he's alright.

You turn your head back to the Natori house. Not a far walk. The open room facing the garden beckons.

Shuuichi-san's thin, limp arm goes around your neck; your arm, steadier than you thought it would be, holds him to your side where it's snug on his waist. You half-carry, half-drag him to the house that way. You set him on the tatami as carefully as you can, minding his head, and then you go look for a pillow and blanket.

The house is empty. You know Shuuichi-san's father and grandfather haunt this place, but they're mercifully away. The house is free for you to roam. You could sneak into the storage room guarding this clan's secrets.

But you don't; you have the thought and it passes flatly by. You have one thing to do, and it's to find that pillow and blanket. In the room next to the one you put Shuuichi-san in, you are successful. You pad back to him, fluffing the pillow before placing it under his head, flapping the blanket before laying it on him.

Asleep, there is not a line of misplaced anger furrowing his brow. It's smoothed over completely. His mouth is a neutral line. Well, nobody smiles when unconscious, do they.

Before your thoughts stray away from you, you sit contemplating the garden as you wait for him to wake up. You do not mind it. At home, you sometimes take to these moments of enjoying nature. This is a new sight. Those flowers are unfamiliar. That tree hasn't seen shears in a while, but its wildness adds to its charm.

Cloth whispers and there is a groan behind you: Shuuichi-san is up. You say, out loud, how rustic and nice the garden is. This is the very first thing you decide to greet him with.

And the very last thing he decides to send you off with: a promise he'll listen to you if you ever come to him. If you need help, he will be the one to give it.

Only someone like him could say such a thing without any embarrassment; his expression is genuine. It's so genuine you have to give a close-eyed smile to shut it out, and you have to give a blithe reply to ward it from your heart. "I'm fine," you laugh. Bolder: "I'm fine."

Are you?

* * *

Here is what you know:

  1. You do not dislike Natori Shuuichi.
  2. In fact, his rough edges do not scratch you. You find their unevenness reassuring to the touch. Their pattern is unpredictable but so very there, gritty at your fingertips.
  3. You wonder what he is doing when he is not with you. You wonder what he had been doing until his stumbling to this world. No one could have this sight and have led such a desolate life, could they?

And what you don't know:

  1. What the things you know mean.

* * *

Your next encounter with Shuuichi-san is not quite accidental, but neither did you plan it. It exists liminally, a glimpse into this tenuous boundary that will reappear between you often. You'd heard Shuuichi-san was working in this area, but you didn't know he'd be here today, at this time.

To your smiling greeting, he offers a small pout and a nod. From him, that's more than enough. The pout is tamer with its every manifestation. Eventually, you could get a smile out of him.

Ah. You haven't seen him smile yet, have you? Or laugh. Or be anything except wary and tense in variations. It's you who's supplied these, and nearly all of them false. You would like to see them for true on Shuuichi-san.

Did you just think that?

"Are you here for the youkai, too?" he asks.

"Yes; why else would I be here?" Oh, but you _do_ know.

Shuuichi-san, however, doesn't. He mumbles something dismissive. Your little game is upheld.

You do not offer to partner up. Rather than receive another refusal, you take Shuuichi-san's tolerance of your presence as implicit teamwork. You're humming to yourself, steps long and lazy to Shuuichi-san's anxious scampering. Your eyes fall to his side and see his bag is much less full than it has tended to be, so you ask him about it.

He amazes you by describing what this youkai's appearance is and what he needs to exorcise it. His information is accurate and complete. He's learning. _Very_ good.

He frowns at your grin. Likely he assumes you know something he doesn't, but you've come equally armed. Though you do not tell him that. Let him think you're as omniscient as your family presents itself to be.

This youkai is no more dangerous than the trihorn that brought you together. Shuuichi-san has grown since then, and you do not doubt he can defeat it on his own. Not that you'll let him. Here is a rival worthy of you. For the time being, though, searching for it aided by another pair of eyes is advantageous.

It has been reported it appears when the sun first touches the horizon, and that when the night has steeped fully it vanishes. Its narrow frame of existence has eluded previous efforts to seal it. If you do not do so today, you will have to go tomorrow, again and again until you do it. It is how you're proving yourself.

"There," Shuuichi-san says, breathes more like, as the sun too breathes upon the earth, sinking to slumber.

There is no telling where exactly this youkai will be among the expanse of this forest. You advise Shuuichi-san to be on alert, and he replies that he is already, you do not need to be so patronizing, to which you do not say anything back because something rustles in the shrubs to your right.

Shuuichi-san has whipped out a paper talisman from his jacket and you're reaching back for your bow. What hops out of the shrubs is a small calico.

Shuuichi-san sighs, relieved; you perk and drop to your knees, murmuring nonsense and extending a hand to draw the cat's attention. Her ears twitch at the sound you're making, and she regards you with bright green eyes, judging you, and decides to approach. She bumps into your hand, purr so loud her throat quivers, and you laugh.

Shuuichi-san kneels as well; you feel his eyes bore curiously onto you.

"I like cats," you say. A sufficient explanation.

"You-" he starts, and leaves that hanging unfinished.

The cat lets you scratch her chin, her eyes blissfully squinting. "Is it surprising?"

Shuuichi-san mumbles a non-answer, which makes you laugh again. You can forgive his assumption. You swipe Shuuichi-san's paper talisman from him and wiggle it above the cat, whose eyes dilate at the sight. She paws at it.

"Have you had pet cats?" Shuuichi-san asks, apparently alright with your slight.

You shake your head. "They're sensitive to the supernatural and would flee a house like mine." You hand the paper over. "You play with her, too."

He struggles between chiding you for wording it like an order and from wanting to do it anyway. What happens is a grumble and fingertips brushing fire to yours as he takes the paper to fuss the cat with it.

You flip your hand palm-up, expecting ink where he'd touched you, smeared remnants from a spell of some sort that would elicit such heat, brief as it was. Nothing is there.

The unmistakable sound of laughter beside you. You see Shuuichi-san has gotten the cat to roll over as she plays with the paper he dangles at her. The cat's snout is open, grin-like; Shuuichi's mouth is curved up as the last of his laugh sneaks out between his teeth.

It is. A very nice sound. And it was a cat that drew it from him, of all things.

You're propping your chin on your fist, watching him in this moment of happiness you've indirectly given him, when he hisses and draws his hand back as the cat, spooked by his outburst, darts to the bushes.

Obviously the playful cat had snagged its claws to Shuuichi-san's skin. He stands as he cradles his hand, marred by a clean line dotting red.

You also get to your feet, patting your pockets for a handkerchief of some sort, and you ask to see his injured hand.

He says no.

It is not a word you hear often. A word of denial that you, in your heightened silk cushions, are denied. Not from Shuuichi. _No_ is about all he ever gives you. Now, though, the refusal startles you. But you quickly find your cat-like smile, appropriate for this, as you reach for his hand anyway.

His protest is weak; he doesn't even try to wring his hand away. The blood wells up as his lizard youkai, perhaps cognizant of the cut, slithers down to it. That does make him try to withdraw his hand, like he's afraid the thing will travel to you, which is a terribly Shuuichi-san belief. You hold his hand firmer yet, and it brings up fatter, redder droplets.

You get the handkerchief out of your pocket and dab away the blood. You apologize for the lack of water or rubbing alcohol, so you ask if he'd like to come to your place so you can disinfect it. You say this only because you live closer by. Yes.

Tension has kept him in place; it has his jaw clenching, his face coloring – discomfort can do that, right? It is also what makes him stiffly shake his head.

You pause, so fleetingly you can move on like it hadn't happened. It _hadn't_ happened. Just like you're not wondering what Shuuichi-san's family will curse him for when he sneaks inside his own house, unwelcome, with a scratch on him.

You think, for the first but not the last time, with an intensity as brief but as bright as a comet: that family of his does not appreciate him as they should. Imagine if he'd had an upbringing like yours. You cannot amend the past, but here is the present ripe in your hands.

He's no longer bleeding. You don't bother folding the handkerchief neatly back to your pocket, but you do ask again, quietly to not disturb the approaching night, if he'd like to come to your house to have the cut cleaned properly. "Since it's late, you can sleep over," you also offer. You would not help him and then abandon him to the night. You would not give him back him to the ignorant Natoris if you could.

You've asked twice and even sweetened the question. Now Shuuichi-san flits his eyes to the floor, holding his hand absentmindedly. Once asked is courtesy, but twice... You suppose that is what he mulls, as well as his own pride, but when does he let _that_ go?

Finally he mumbles, "Okay. Sorry."

Sorry for what? You laugh and lead him home.

_Natori Shuuichi_ is a name oft whispered in your house's halls. Some of it is from your clan's people awed at the bereft family's return. Some of it is your own utterance of it, especially to Nanase-san, who sees you usher him in. Shuuichi-san misses her smirk, but you don't.

First you tend his cut, holding his hand, warm despite the sun long-slept outside the house, as you let cold water run over it. You tell him to lather it with soap while you rummage through the cabinets for rubbing alcohol, tweezers, and cotton balls- ah, they're right there (because exorcists commonly suffer injuries, as you will later learn). Carefully you soak a cotton ball with alcohol, eye-burningly strong, and peck at Shuuichi's hand with it, making him jump and wince to your delight and his annoyance. You hold up a bandage in silent question, but he doesn't want it. It's not a serious cut and you've done enough, he says.

After, you look at your hand that had held his. So you do not see him do the same.

He calls home to tell them where he's at. The call can't have lasted more than ten seconds.

To sleep, then. It would be improper to have him in the same room as you, though it's spacious. You show him to his room for the night where a change of clothes has been laid on the futon, inform him of your own location should he need anything, and bid him a good night that he echoes, embarrassed.

Is this happiness?

You don't know. It simply is what it is.

* * *

Neither do you know what to do with these feelings.

You arm yourself with your bow and arrows and head for your manor's archery range. The targets have not been changed from an earlier practice; you see the holes from older arrows pierced through.

You don't care. You raise the bow, eye up to the impure heart of the target. You notch an arrow. You shoot and you shoot and you shoot and you shoot and you sh-

* * *

The sun shines on the loquats, plumped by a good season and the kindness of their doting proprietor. You pass them often when walking around with Shuuichi-san, the fruits temptations out of reach. It doesn't stop Shuuichi-san from looking at them, so it doesn't stop you from watching him look at them. You see your reflection in his eyes. You're... forlorn. You want to try a loquat but the fruit isn't yours. You could ask Shuuichi-san to get one for you, but he's not much taller than you. Anyway, he would never do that – his rough appearance is exactly that, an appearance.

You learn the trees are in the property of an exorcist Shuuichi-san is acquainted with. He's slowly making his mark upon this field. Partly for his name, triumphantly returned. Overwhelmingly for his personality, tenacious and – you hate that you think it – magnetic. (But even you're here, aren't you?)

This new information makes the next daydreamed step come true. Shuuichi-san, next to you, of a height with you, asks for the loquats, two please, which Yorishima-san hands over. You're not expecting it at all, but what you're surprised by more is that when Shuuichi-san moves to give you a loquat, you put your hands out obediently. You're then blinking at this thoughtless action come from _you_.

You stare at the loquat for a moment longer than necessary. It is really there, in your cupped palms. Sun-warmed. A gift from Shuuichi-san.

You bite it.

It's your first loquat. A crush – in your teeth, chewing this to pieces.

It's sweet. Its dribbling juice sticks your fingers together.

Quite sweet. You really like it. Another bite, eager now that you know what to expect of the fruit, and you look up at Shuuichi-san to tell him what you feel.

His pretty face is in a grimace. His cheek is puffed out. He's not eating, instead affecting one of his glares to the fruit in his hand, bitten just once.

"This isn't sweet," he says. "I got a bad one."

And you do not speak of the sugar coating your tongue because you do not know if he would believe it.

You taste sugar for days after you had the fruit.

It's a taste arising from more than that, isn't it. You don't even make it a question in your own head. It's a truth.

* * *

You are Matoba Seiji. This is your hand (that you pretend is his). This is your body (that you need not pretend is drawn to him). You belong to no one; you are to feel nothing for no one. (But he's in your dreams as he is in your life, and in those half-unreal moments where you are fully conscious of what you are doing to his image, to your mild horror and disgust. And that matters none at all when you're in the throes of the Natori Shuuichi in your head.)

* * *

At the river bank where you self-reflected without glancing at the water, you find him lying down, napping, with his lumpy bag of exorcist paraphernalia by him.

You move the bag out of the way to take its place, making noise that gets Shuuichi-san awake with an outcry prepared, but he sees it's you and relaxes. Though you do get that pout, tame as you've ever seen it.

"Why didn't you sit on my other side?" he asks you. "You didn't need to move anything there."

"Maybe I wanted to wake you up," you reply, smirking, joining him on the grass. You don't really know why you said that. You don't think it's your real reason why. Now _that_ is a worry. You've acted without knowing why.

He sighs. This is how you are in your needless riling, and this he's learned too. He lies back on the grass, folding his arms to cradle his head.

No breeze flirts with the grass or upsets the water. Summer's warmth presses down on everything, still and intimate. The sunlight is too strong; it reaches the inside of your chest, where it spreads something awful. It goes all the way to your head. You are supine but lightheaded – in the dizzy sense, in the radiant sense.

You swiftly forge that light to lightning, bolting up to mess with Shuuichi-san's things, the bag's zipper loud as an invasion.

"What do we have here?" you say, going through what is mostly paper. The Natoris were paper-wielders, after all; this is the knowledge crumbling in the family's storage room that Shuuichi-san is teaching himself. Reviving the dead to kill the almost-living. Ink bottles and brushes of various sizes are there – something is needed to adorn the paper with the wards that will give it purpose.

"Hey, stop it!" he shouts, twisting around to stop you. But because you are in the way, because the bag is not between both of you but next to you, because you are always a regent and will not give in so easily – because of this you do not heed him, and as he leans over you to make you stop, you realize he is almost fallen over you, and so does he.

Time couldn't have stopped. It would have been felt by all, and the confusion over those frozen seconds would have buzzed like cicadas after time regained itself. But that's what it feels has happened, with Shuuichi-san supporting the whole of his weight with his arms bent low by your sides, his body blocking out the sun but suffusing it where it glows behind him, a halo around his hair, his mouth parted in something unsaid.

Neither could time have skipped. But one moment Shuuichi-san is over you and the next he's collapsed on his back upon the grass, just as he'd been before- before that, and though nothing had unfolded between you both, you burn as if everything had. You'd remember if he'd kissed you. If he'd touched you. If he'd so much as breathed on you. These keep to dreams. They hadn't happened. But you're burning.

The sun is overhead, searing circles to your vision, and so you close your eyes. Mindfulness. Practice mindfulness. Force your heart back to its cage of bones. Breathe, deep and calm. Remember emotions are fleeting but blood is eternal.

You are Matoba Seiji and you will not be made the fool over a boy.

"Sorry, Seiji," you hear, because of course Shuuichi-san is the kind of boy who thinks things can be ameliorated if you talk about them.

What is he sorry about? That he'd stolen into your space, as if he hasn't been there without his knowing, for months now? That he hadn't done anything when something should have occurred?

Folly, that. You open your eyes, the sun greeting you, and its immense light obscures Shuuichi-san's face in shadows when you turn to him and pull yourself to a smile.

"Don't mind it," you tell him. That's what you actually tell him.

* * *

What you know, revisited:

  1. You do not dislike Natori Shuuichi.
  2. Because, in fact, you like him. When you tried to put a name to these feelings, you had not been able to – you had nothing to compare these feelings to; your vast education did not include love's definition – but when you stopped thinking yourself to frowns about it, the name came in an epiphany. You like Natori Shuuichi.
  3. But. One day you will be wed to a woman, as all male heads of the Matoba clan must be. You will not love her. Neither the obligatory product of your forced union. So you should get used to a closed-off heart now.

What you don't know, revisited:

  1. How to stop yourself from falling further for this unfinished sculpture of a boy.

* * *

You spot him from the top of the banister. Hard to miss that mop of hair, light in a crowd of dark. He's trying to overhear conversations between people more important than him, and for his brazenness you privately commend and grin at him. Then, loudly, you call his name, waving so he cannot lie later and say he hadn't seen you. He winces as all eyes swivel to the one who the Matoba heir has summoned. A Natori, of all people. The exorcists he'd been blatantly loitering by frown at him, guessing what he'd been trying to do.

Shuuichi-san scurries up the stairs, mortified. You laugh and motion for him to follow you around the corner, at least to escape the gathered eyes of judgment.

Your conversation is polite, more one-sided on your part, until Shuuichi-san forgets his earlier embarrassment.

Then it is you who forgets your words when your father glides down the hallway, direction opposite yours, shadowed shiki and black-clothed exorcists alike trailing after him, but none as dark as his hair, tied to a low ponytail, whipping as if alive with his every purposeful stride. But he's not forgotten white, either: there it is, the ward over his right eye, and though you cannot see it you feel it on you as he passes you with not a word or nod of acknowledgment otherwise.

You did not realize you'd stopped walking until a hand is firm but kind on your shoulder, and Shuuichi-san is asking you if that was your father. The resemblance, was it? Or the apprehension you all but announced?

That had been a mistake. It doesn't matter if your father is aware of how you see him or what he makes you doubt about yourself, who exists to perfect and replace him. It is others who must never learn this ruse: that your confidence is shakable. Especially not Shuuichi-san.

Yet you can't help observing, aloud, how neither of you like your fathers.

There is sympathy in the look he gives you. But also- also something sorrowful. You do not like it, but before you can disdain his pity or whatever it is, he asks, "What was that on his face?"

You haven't told him. This is something established exorcists just know, but Shuuichi-san had gracelessly barged into this life he wanted to understand. You are part of that, it seems.

You tell him about the Matoba name, much as it was told to you, but now to this outsider. This boy who should have been born to something like you; who, had you both been born decades before, would have been cast off the instant anyone noticed him around you. Your mouth is dry, monotonous with the movements, but in your quirk of a smile you do not let it show.

When you are finished, he gapes at you. He's horrified, as you anticipated. What a Shuuichi-san thing to do, worrying about someone else.

What really seals it is when he puts his hands again on your shoulders, so overbearingly concerned you don't know what to do, and says: "You have to bear that?"

"Yes," you say when you are certain you can be as detached as you should. "That's what the Matoba head-"

"I can't- I can't accept that." His grip on you tightens; he pulls you closer to him, then realizes what he's done and drops his hands, as well as his gaze. "For one person to bear that-"

Your turn to interrupt him. "I don't need you to accept it. You simply needed to be informed. This is on me alone." The shape of his hands on your skin is fading. You'd said it before, that you're fine. It bears repeating, which you do.

Shuuichi-san remains unconvinced.

But you are nothing if not fluent in deflections.

"This would be easier to understand if you joined my clan," you say, light as sunrise, hiding all the weight of the sun lifting itself through the heavens.

Shuuichi directs his scowl at the ground. He can't deign to meet your eyes as he says no, that beloved word of his, the one you like out of him, the one you want to exorcise now.

You know not such an art. You wield your smile, your weapon against others as much as it is defense against yourself, and you say something blithe; you can't remember what you said right after you say it, but it is a falsity to undo this little wrinkle.

He's not just refused the literal. He's refused you, with your unspoken intent, with the longing you couldn't verbalize until now – you want him by your side. He with the impurities in a glass heart, he without support or a hand to guide him to this life he was born to, he with none he might have called a friend but you – even he does not want the Matoba name over him.

You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?

Must you say your name until your lips chap and bleed? Must you chant it like a spell until it etches itself to your bones?

You are Matoba Seiji and there are many things you can have, but none of those are him. 

* * *

In retrospect, there was no single occasion that severed the both of you. There were always subtle incompatibilities you ignored because that is what you do for things useless to you. You were too much like Shuuichi-san, and also so unlike him, that these two forces spun themselves to oblivion with a speed that damaged everything around them. (The everything was you and him.) 

You kept running into him accidentally-on-purpose after you failed to tie him to your name. It was never quite the same after that, though. You were reminded of that by Shuuichi-san's mere presence, and he in turn must have been discomforted by associating with you despite having refused you.

Those are assumptions. You do not talk of what bothers you. He does not, either. Neither of you will be the weak one who yields first.

This too crumbled what you'd built. There was much you let go wrong because you could not accept being anything but a Matoba. You were placed on a narrow path since birth and thus you have tread it, without glancing back to realize Shuuichi-san was soon gone.

Obviously he's left. He's a ghost now, much like the ones he claims to hate. Though those haunt you less.

You do not blame him for turning his back to you. Having those sorts of feelings would mean there was something to be apologetic or defensive about. And you do not waver. Your convictions are iron. As are his. You had to let him go. You cannot share this path with someone made of anything softer than stone.

(It would have been nice. Impossible, though. Perhaps it could have been in another life where neither of you were quite yourselves.)

This world is very, very small. It cannot contain both of your prides.

You are Matoba Seiji. And you still like Natori Shuuichi.

* * *

He leaves, and then your father – but permanently.

You do not feel anything when you're told, in low, regretful tones, that the Matoba clan head has passed, having worked himself to death. You observe it from above. Yourself, too. Your hair's to your shoulder bones now. You have two perfectly unmarred eyes.

You're ascending to the very place you were born to. So you nod your acknowledgment to the news-bearing servant and resume your archery, landing an arrow to the one already lodged to the target. This new one has split the old in half, splinters in disarray in two directions.

He worked himself to death. He was a Matoba and this is how he died.

That, you vow, closing your right eye as you notch your next arrow, the world retaining its three dimensions yet flattening somehow, will not be you.

The preparations for the funeral and your own accession hurry by.

First you lay the old Matoba-sama to rest, and already some endow you with that honorific. Every exorcist, including the ones your clan has no love lost with, is sent an invitation. There are many people who come, oddly, and then you realize it might not be to pay their respects but to confirm the man is dead, and to assess the boy-not-quite-man who is replacing him. So you meet their skeptical, wizened frowns with a smile you perfect to sharpness by the day. You do not hear of any doubts about your leading abilities afterward.

It is a somber affair, and you don polite mourning: enough that others do not note your apathy about your father, but not so much anyone would question your emotional composure for the leader you soon will be.

There is a face you spend the day searching for, surreptitiously as you can. It doesn't have to be his face, really; the back of his head will do. He need not look at you. You will take whatever you can as long as you see something of Shuuichi-san. Would he have come, anyway? He knew how you felt about your father; in his earnestness, maybe he's forgone this affair to not see your farce.

You're tipping your head in silent thanks at some distant relative who's just offered their condolences, and as you raise your head, past the black-clothed bodies shuffling along, you find a pair of rust-red eyes on you. His mouth is pursed, like he doesn't know what to say or even think about this; his hands are in loose fists. You'd need to cross a crowd to reach him and interrupt the queue of people wishing to speak with you.

Your leg twitches, wanting to stride over to him, but you make the conscious decision to stay where you are. You hold his gaze, two eyes on two (for the last time, unknown to you both), and nod very minutely. I see you, that gesture says, and I thank you for coming.

He slides his eyes elsewhere. The crowd moves yet again, closing the gap that had let you glimpse Shuuichi-san. By the time the people settle and a path opens up once more that a daring somebody who is not you could cross, he's gone.

From here on, his comings and goings will be like this. Where once you crashed into each other's orbits, now you both trace the furthest path you can that can still allow you to be the other's satellite. You cannot escape this fate; you can walk away from him and he from you but neither of you can wholly avoid the other. Gravity is stronger than the choices you make.

Shuuichi-san is not at your accession. It is a private ceremony where the family gathers and congratulates itself for its prestige unbroken by time. The pride is thick in the air. Nobody speaks of the other thing you're being gifted today. Not even after the eyepatch, the symbol for what you will carry, is tied around your face. But perhaps those who do not have to worry about being the hunted are wholly proud of the curse. After all, it legitimizes the Matoba's grip among the exorcists.

Yes. This is what you must sacrifice to be who you are. Regret is not permitted.

To end the ceremony, you fire an arrow, right side blinded by the ward. It strikes the innermost circle slightly off-center, but it's obvious only to you, who has spent cumulative years of your life staring down archery targets. Everyone else claps and lauds your ability. Truly this will be an auspicious era for the clan if it is you who leads them all.

You lower your bow, their clapping dimming through the cotton in your ears. You are Matoba Seiji, head of an entire legion of exorcists, this moment you were born to fulfill, this life you are veered into fully, at last.

* * *

The first time he calls you_ Matoba-san_ thrusts a rusted knife to your stomach. You didn't request for the distance to be explicit in how you addressed each other. It's just happened, and at Shuuichi-san's instigation.

You counter it with a _Natori-san_, cool and calm as a pond in autumn. (Hiding under its depths: _Shuuichi-san_, always, and now confined just to the privacy of your own thoughts.) Through the gossip exorcists love, you've heard he's recently taken up acting. Exorcism is not the most lucrative job, moreover for someone without anyone's backing like him. It's not unusual for exorcists to have other jobs, but that someone with skill like Shuuichi-san has to do it, and that it's _acting_... there is disappointment in your tone, too. He's becoming _Natori Shuuichi-san_ to many who meet his splendor on the screen.

But you? By virtue of your name, you were always _Matoba-san_. Every time thereafter he calls you for who you are, a smaller piece of you is carved out. Eventually, there will be nothing left to gut. You suppose this is a mercy. The thing about repeated attacks to your person is that it makes your skin callus until nothing can hurt anymore.

* * *

You know what's next, don't you? Something to counteract the thickness you thought covered you. Something that will teach you visceral pain. Something to remind you of you are.

The world was condensed to you and the target's existences, every exhale timed to an arrow's release. You're still getting used to your reduced depth perception, adjusting how you wield the bow, honing your hearing to compensate for your vision.

When you crane your head right at the thump of feet on wood and see your father, you forget – only for an instant, but that instant is enough – that the youkai after you was due sometime soon. That it can take the form of those close to you. That brief naivety, that indecision in your bow, is all it takes for your father- the _youkai_, with its right eye a turbid cesspool of shadows, to lunge at you.

It is going to aim for your right eye. This you remember with the jolt of the wooden floor slammed to your pinned-down back, and you appropriately cast your head aside, saving you from the worst of its clawed hand raking your face.

You do not scream. Fire is flowing from ragged lines that have scraped off your skin and torn into your muscle, and it's burning crimson into your eye, but you do not scream. The grotesque precision of this pain snaps you to yourself, and with an arrow jabbed at the youkai's good eye, along with a simultaneous slap of a spare talisman hidden in your robes, it hisses and vanishes into smoke. The attack hadn't lasted long at all. It had been quiet enough that no one – kept away from your practice by your own orders – came to see what had happened.

Something is clinging to you like second skin grown to patch what has been torn off. Ah, right. The ward over your eye. Sticky with blood that won't stop dripping down. You've closed your eye to keep the blood out, but contracting the muscles around it flares further fire on the wound. Teeth gritted, you walk back in the manor, where the closest servant is the one who screams at the sight of you, black clothes and white skin in red gore.

The eyepatch is peeled wetly from you, and an excuse is prepared for what could have caused such an injury. Then it's a mad rush to the hospital, where you have three thoughts stretching themselves into the time it takes for you to be ushered to emergency.

In succession:

You wonder if you will be able to see out of this eye again. (Yes. There was a lot of blood, and the wound was deep, but it did not scrape off your eye – just skin, and skin we all lose.)

You wonder if the recognition of your leadership will suffer. (No. The clan will maintain the truth behind your accident from others' ears. What will spread is the rumor of the scar your eyepatch conceals, and how much more menacing it makes you in that you do not show it, in that you do not waver come the youkai's next attack.)

You wonder what Shuuichi-san will think when he hears of this, and then when he sees you, if at his distance. (Because you cannot glean any thoughts unsaid, and because you'd rather have your other eye maimed than ask, this you will never have answered.)

When your stitches are removed, you stand in front of a mirror as you study your new face in your bedroom. The wound has closed itself to paler skin nail-mark jagged trailing from your eyebrow to under your eye. It's not pretty, but your role is not to be beautiful. It is to lead by whatever means necessary. This scar will add weight to your name.

You grin, pulling the skin around your eyes to tight whiteness.

* * *

Comings and goings; goings and comings. Seasons tinge the trees in green, then red, then in nothing at all. You chase after the ghosts. At meetings, you watch one of them from afar: sometimes in traditional clothes like yours, sometimes with a ridiculous hat you can't bring yourself to really hate, sometimes in masked disguises that fool all but you, who cares to look. Sometimes you come across each other elsewhere. There was that cave, remember, where he went to help the Natsume boy. But you always leave.

Then there is the Miharu mansion.

Shuuichi-san is the furthest thing in your mind. You are here for a duty, as is mandated at posts along this path.

He runs out of some bushes calling after the Natsume boy and you are reminded, locked onto his stupefied expression, that he's long made a home in your thoughts – you may not be focused on him at all times, but his presence persists, incorporeal but immovable. Now he is here in the flesh before you, _staring_ at you like that, and you hope your mask has not been so upset you show the same (which it is, and you have no way of knowing, but Shuuichi-san sees it; he sees it).

You quickly find something to say, slipping on a smile you've worn of meaning, and just like that you are returned to the poorly-covered estrangement you both traipse.

There are important things for you to do here. A promise you didn't make has to be complete. The irony hasn't been lost to you, but you hide it well enough. It's Shuuichi-san, ever with his heart at his sleeve, who blurts out what you knew he'd say about it – but, last-minute, he bites his tongue. Out of sympathy? Guilt?

The two of you are used to animosity beat to thinness. To distance. That is precisely why you send Shuuichi-san elsewhere and take Natsume-kun with you. It helps that Natsume-kun's spiritual power is greater than Shuuichi-san's, and that where you've told him to go requires his paper skill. You've learned to use your famed pragmatism to its fullest.

If Shuuichi-san is softhearted, this boy has silk for a soul. Fascinating. For his power and lifelong struggles against those who did not understand it, he's not been warped. He continues to have innocent hope. It's gotten to Shuuichi-san; you've noticed in how he treats youkai – the ones to be exorcised, and the ones by his side.

You don't like it, you think. Not necessarily because Shuuichi-san is changing, but because you've missed the progress; you catch only the consequences when he returns to your periphery.

The one thing you do know is that Shuuichi-san sees himself in Natsume-kun, and that he is doing all he can to keep him from becoming like either of you.

You hear the word _loquats_.

You turn your eyes up – you still think of them in the plural, even if it's just one that can see unobstructed – and you cross your arms, silently projecting the memory on an unassuming part of the cobwebbed ceiling. That was your intention, at least, but you mention how good the loquats you once tried were because the memory comes so vividly you're helpless in voicing it. It startles Natsume-kun, though, as it means you'd been listening to his conversation with Shuuichi-san's shiki, and in his eyes you can see him parsing you for an ulterior motive. Such is your reputation: you do not have moments where you act before speaking; your every breath is calculated. That is what you have encouraged to be whispered of you. That is the way it should be.

Deflections again; you're here to work, Natsume-kun trudging along.

But he's more frustratingly earnest than Shuuichi-san, and he asks you if you've ever thought of quitting this.

Your reply is immediate, in the negative.

And then you pull a physical mask over yourself. Paper, inked. Hmm.

Soon Shuuichi-san, task complete, jogs up to you.

Hmm.

He doesn't like your meddling with Natsume-kun, saying as much, like it wasn't obvious from how he protectively bristles at your every word thrown the boy's way, thinking every one of them a dose of poison that will alter him to be like you.

It doesn't bother you. Shuuichi-san has been like this since you've known him, and you can capably handle his anger. Deflect, tug a paper bag over Shuuichi-san's head.

A clatter from somewhere: upon investigation, it's from a room, open, though your people had locked everything.

You're shoved inside by someone, something, so roughly your paper masks flutter off, and as you and Shuuichi-san pick yourselves up, there is a sharp click. You're locked in. While you are meant to conduct the youkai-guardian welcoming ceremony. Locked in a room with Shuuichi-san, fraught with tension, with naught but aged wood for your witnesses.

You can't hurl a chair at a window fast enough.

No luck. This room has been charmed, though the evidence is hidden. You both decide to search for it, for anything helpful in the room that will aid your escape. You linger where you are, eyes lost in a corner of the room. But. Escape. That's what you need to do.

Behind a curtain, Shuuichi-san finds a mask. You lean into it and point out the mansion is filled with curiosities like these, so this probably doesn't mean much, and now you're being pushed aside as Shuuichi-san throws his arm in front of you, the force of him so sudden and stronger than you'd have thought that you gape at that arm protecting you – _you – _as he shouts at you to stand back. Not even a heartbeat later, a blade whooshes past the mask's eye you'd just been peering through.

He'd done that because it is in his blood to put others above himself. There's no deeper meaning here. Still, part of you thinks, with absolute detachment, that you owe your good eye to him. You think in terms of debts, those distant brothers to promises, where Shuuichi-san thinks of what is right. He will not want you in his debt. You don't say anything about it, but you think it.

No more than ten seconds pass in this. You have to escape, remember? You have to be mindful of your actions as only the Matoba clan head can be. If the room is cursed, you break it; if you have something important to you, you protect it. The mindfulness is in how passively you speak of such things closer to your core than you'll ever admit.

Shuuichi-san coughs. He says it's getting harder to breathe. You feel fine, despite the circumstances; you touch your throat as if expecting a cough to rattle you too, and you cup your hand like the air will condense in your palm, holding the miasma Shuuichi-san complains about. Nothing happens. The curse must affect only certain people, but how do you and Shuuichi-san differ-?

Your names.

"Matoba-san?"

Distraction broken by its very cause now spoken, you turn to Shuuichi-san. Already you think of a plan, brought forth by your realization. You burn a paper talisman, the messenger wrought from smoke curling lazily to and fro, seeking the curse's origin. You make idle conversation while you wait. Those idle things that are rooted in your mind as much as they are in others' in their association of you and your ideology. They help dissipate whatever it is has descended, dense, on the room. There is only the tiniest pause in your talking, because even you need to breathe and swallow, and it's where Shuuichi-san chooses to ask, in echo of Natsume-kun, if you've ever thought of quitting being an exorcist.

You pause yet again – not to breathe but to halt it completely. No, this isn't an echo. This is coming from Shuuichi-san; there is history to this question, there are layers to unearth, not all of which you want to sully yourself with. You feel faster than you can think, your thoughts hazing into memories a lag behind the emotions spanning years striking you in the span of a second, and the thoughts flicker by in age regressed. You go from now to before, all the things you did and didn't do as your fate ordained, and when you reach the day you met Natori Shuuichi, you hold that to stillness in your mind. You watch the young version of yourself, unmoving, before you speak, not knowing what your soon-to-be interruption entails.

There had been happiness in your mental reel (like meeting the person before you). So too had there been... unpleasant things (like knowing despite your everything, you can never be with him).

What do you value more? What you want or who you want?

Your answer to him, in reality just a slow heartbeat out of place: "Not at all."

Fortuitously, the smoke messenger has found where the main curse is embedded. You ask Shuuichi-san if he can perform a paper ritual. The smoke the messenger dispersed outlines other simple curses scribbled on the walls. These keep out intruders, you say. They affect people whose hearts are not stalwart. So can he get you both out? Or will this be something you too bear?

He'll do it, he says. Breathes in. Assumes the correct posture, the talisman with the right incantation. Doesn't cough or falter once. You cannot see your own expression, but it's prideful. Small, but prideful.

He slaps the talisman on the wall, and as the spell evoked the transformation of wood to paper, so it turns. The door you'd been pushed through is crudely drawn upon the sheets of paper falling to the ground, and under it is the real one.

"Well done," you say to Shuuichi-san, mildly, your hands tucked to your kimono's sleeves. Now it is you who leaves him – there is a ceremony you're awfully late for – with the paper mask back over your face. Parting is easier when it is under your terms.

You assume your place in the procession, leading the nebulous, faceless youkai to the ceremonial room. You time your next step to the turn of your head as another youkai, belligerent, slams to a barrier Shuuichi-san had set up without your noticing. It wasn't done for you, though the youkai would have reached you if it hadn't been for him. It was for the ceremony. You face forward, you walk to the room. You do your duty, as your ancestors before you, and strangers before that.

It's over so mundanely. But that's what most of what you do is. It's when Shuuichi-san falls back into your view that things get interesting. That was your first impression of him, and it hadn't been inaccurate.

You thank each other; you'd helped one another. You laugh – you're even, you say. You do not mention the debt of your eye. Shuuichi-san will never see it as such.

Quite the day you've had. You sit on a bench on your lonesome. Ah. Well. You and your thoughts, heavy on your shoulders with living weight. Today, you, a Matoba, took the place of another in an old promise to the very creatures you're sworn to eliminate. The Miharu clan had died out with no one left with the sight. There is no excuse for that, you think. You, who are as of yet unmarried, dare to think that. Something in your stomach sinks like a stone tossed to a well. Soon you'll be paraded with the eligible exorcists – the women – skillful enough to be united to your clan. Some poor woman whose fate will be to just bear a child for the sake of your family's elite existence. This is inevitable, as much to you as for your future wife. You can't let what happened to the Miharus happen to the Matobas. But neither do you always have to be content in what you must do.

In the corner of your eye you spy a flop of hair, and briefly you think it's Shuuichi-san summoned by his loud, purposefully nameless absence in your thoughts. But it's just Natsume-kun. You seem to be very talkative today as you recount, in a diluted, less vulnerable version, what you'd mused about sitting here. And then some. Someone will replace you, eventually, and maybe you don't have to perform this again.

He hands you a loquat.

You blink at it.

He thinks that if you're the head by then, that you'll have no trouble with it. As long as you put your heart to it. No need to be so down.

You laugh, a dry little thing more because you're stunned than humored, but you do privately have the confidence to laugh at yourself for what he's said. "Did I appear unhappy?" you say, as you take the loquat, as you remember the last time you had one. As you take that memory from its nook in a safe but quiet corner of your mind. Can something be more than a memory when it's in the past yet still as real as the present?

It is one of your people who stops this unnecessary reverie, as they tell you the ceremony room has been cleared, and you can all leave knowing the duty is fulfilled for years to come. You don't exactly apologize to Natsume-kun for the story, as that would indicate it was something you should not have said – which, mind, you should not have, but you are not going to profess it. The loquat is warming in your palm as you stand and follow your underling.

You bring the fruit to your nose, smelling its sweetness. You do not bite it, though. Not here. You pocket the loquat and cast your head toward the direction you know the loquat tree grows, certain Shuuichi-san has escaped there. If returning to something of your shared past to avoid you could be an escape. Perhaps it is. You might have done the same.

You are-

Forget names. You are yourself. You are in love with Natori Shuuichi. You always will be.

**Author's Note:**

> yuki midorikawa if ur reading this and wanna make canon my matoba hypothesizing i won't be mad at all
> 
> title modified from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9oHZSbE268) song


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